


Honey

by daoinhe



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mental Anguish, Other, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 16:06:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14596656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daoinhe/pseuds/daoinhe
Summary: Another of those ideas that have been beating around inside my head, crying for release.





	Honey

“Hey Pyro!” Ms. Pauling calls out cheerfully as she walks into the clinic. She waves, and I try to talk to her. I want to tell her that her dress is lovely, that she looks like a hummingbird or a dragonfly in that shade of purple, but, thanks to Medic and his drugs, all I can do is mumble and drool down the side of my chin. I try to lift my hand to wipe it away, but I feel like I’m encased in honey. It has to be honey, I think, the world looks kind of golden around the edges and everything inside my head is sticky. My thoughts keep running into each other, my hands won’t work, my feet won’t work. Definitely honey. 

Medic wipes my chin gently with a cloth as he greets Ms. Pauling. I try to flinch away from his touch, but the honey won’t let me. Ms. Pauling pulls up a stool and sits down, so close that I can smell her perfume. It’s light and airy, like flowers. I breathe in deeper, holding her scent to me, trying to remember it for later. Maybe when she leaves, and Medic opens his surgical kit, I will be able to remember Ms. Pauling’s flowers.

They are talking now, talking about me like I’m not here. People do that a lot. They shouldn’t do that, it’s rude. I let out the breath of flowery air I was holding in my lungs and try to concentrate. Medic is telling her something about the latest “cocktail” of drugs he’s giving me. And telling her that I’m still hallucinating, still aggressively dangerous to those around me. I look at the table top in front of me. My half-eaten dinner is sitting in a congealing pool of grease. I don’t know what it is, nobody tells me. It looks like oatmeal and tastes like recycled shit. Not that I’ve ever eaten shit, but I can imagine what it would taste like.

Medic sighs, Ms. Pauling must have said something that upset him. He pulls my coloring book closer and puts a crayon in my hand. “Color something nice, Liebling, while I speak with Ms. Pauling.” He caresses my hair with his hand. I curl up inside and nearly gag, I am so disgusted by his touch. 

He stands up and goes to the medicine locker with Ms. Pauling and I try to do as I am told. He gave me a brown crayon. He knows that I hate brown. I touch the crayon to the paper and my concentration shifts to the picture of a kitten. I try to color. My hand won’t obey me. It scribbles on the paper, ruining the kitten forever. Am I a kitten, I wonder, as tears begin to fall down my cheeks and onto the paper. I scribble harder. Maybe if I can snap the brown crayon, he will throw it away. The pack sits so close to me, I can see the other colors sparkling like gems. Sparkling like flowers, or like rainbows. I will not reach out for them. The first time I reached for the crayons, to change colors, Medic sewed my eyelids shut so I couldn’t see the brilliant hues. He left me like that, inside my mask for an entire weekend. The stitches felt like worms every time my eyeballs twitched in their sockets. The second time I did it, I ended up going through respawn twice. I have not changed colors since then. I will use the crayon I am given. Even if I do hate brown. 

I glance up every now and then, making sure that she is still here. While she is here, bad things won’t happen. Medic never does the bad things when people are here to watch. He waits like a spider. I giggle silently at the thought of Medic sprouting eight hairy legs and skittering around on the floor. If that happened, maybe Heavy would stomp him. Heavy stomped a spider that was crawling near me one time. The floor vibrated when his foot came down, and when he lifted it, I could see the little spider corpse stuck to the treads of his boot. It made me very sad. But I was happy too because the spider couldn’t crawl on me. 

Oh no, I must have made a noise. Medic is looking over his shoulder at me, eyes narrowed in that look he gets when he has a particularly brilliant idea. I’ve found out that brilliant translates to painful. He looks back to Ms. Pauling and they start talking again. I look down at the mess I’ve made on my page. It looks like dirt. My mind flashes back to the dirt outside. Then to the fighting. I don’t like the fighting. I like the fires I can make, but I don’t want to hurt those other people. In the mornings, Medic gives a shot, and it burns in my veins like ice. Then, I start to get mad. Not just mad but a gloriously magnificent anger. I go out and I burn anything I see. Anything blue, that is. I know why. Every time that Medic hurts me, he is wearing blue, or saying blue, or making me look at blue. Blue means pain. Blue means knives and scalpels and unending pain. I must burn the blue or it will hurt me. 

The tears are falling faster now, and my nose is starting to run. I don’t want Ms. Pauling to leave, but she will. And then I’ll be alone with Medic again. And the knives will come out, and the needles, and the blue pain will begin. Medic stops talking and walks over to me. He wipes my nose with a tissue and throws it into the trash. He and Ms. Pauling are saying Good bye. 

“Please Ms. Pauling,” I cry out in my head. “Please don’t leave me with him. Please not again, Ms. Pauling.” She reaches down and lays her hand on mine, and for a minute I hope. Maybe somehow she knows. Maybe by some miracle she heard my silent pleas. I imagine her pulling me from the chair, leading me outside into the sunshine and the clean air. Away from the smells of blood and gunpowder and roasting flesh.

Then, she gives my hand a gentle squeeze and turns away. The door closes behind her with a soft click. Medic turns to me, his ice blue eyes holding promises of agony. Inside my head, I start to scream.


End file.
